What I Wish I did in College

Created: May 14th, 2026

I graduate from college tomorrow morning. I will have spent four years in total there. While I did fulfill the purpose of being there (getting a degree), I'm already looking back on the experience and wishing it were different.

What happened

Before college even started, I asked my best friend from highschool to be my roommate in the dorms. I was hopeful with this setup, since we had a really close friendship. He was also a good pick, since he was the main thing that kept me social (I had trouble making friends, and I could tag along and meet people with him). The first month or so of living at college in the dorms went well. I met all of the people he was meeting and had a good time. Unfortunately, a few unfortunate circumstances arose that changed the course of the next four years.

First, I had decided to get into my 'self-improvement' phase. Basically, this was my coping phase before I realized that I was trans. I started going to the gym every morning at 6AM, I had started a YouTube channel in the hopes of growth, and overall I started isolating myself from everybody. Only one good thing came out of this phase: the YouTube channel. I don't mean the channel itself, but rather the opportunity it gave me. It was a channel focused on electrical engineering and making circuits, and I used it as leverage when I was looking for an internship (and it worked). But other than this success, it was an overall negative period of my life since, like I said, I isolated myself quite a bit.

Second, I didn't like the friends my friend was making. Like I mentioned earlier, my social strategy was simply piggy-backing off his social life. However, I did not enjoy the people he decided to become friends with. This was a problem, since he was basically my only social source and I didn't have the understanding at the time to make friends on my own.

And finally, the thing that really isolated me, was the weekend of my father's birthday. Basically, I went home for the weekend to celebrate my dad's birthday. During the weekend, my friend had allowed somebody else to use my bed. He didn't ask me for permission, and he tried to hide it (by washing the sheets in the laundry). I was able to tell since he didn't reset them in the right way. I did ask him about it and he apoligized, but I was pretty upset about it at the time and I lost quite a bit of trust in him. We ended up slowly drifting apart after this.

With these three things combined, I stopped talking to people and buried any of my dysphoria behind a self-improvement cope. Basically, the only thing I achieved were good grades and the YouTube channel. These are good things to have for certain, but it hurts thinking that I could have also had friends, joined more clubs, started dating, and have realized who I really was sooner.

Utimately, I was able to snap out of my situation around my junior year. I made friends online (VRChat) and came out as gay first, then trans later. I am very grateful for these experiences, but I could have done them without college since they were exclusively online. Maybe I would have joined the gay club at my school or found a boyfriend to date in person there if I had done things a little differently.

I think about what could have been...

What I Wish had Happened

First, I wish I had never roomed with my friend from highschool. Looking back, he was a great friend. However, I should have listened to advice from teachers and old people in general when they recommended to never live with your friends. I wouldn't have socially copied him as much and we would still be friends today.

Second, I wish that I was OK with being queer in general from the start. When you can't accept yourself, you have a really hard time connecting with anyone. Meeting people is the easiest freshmen year when everybody is new and living in the dorms. It would have been so much easier to find people who were also queer to befriend and relate to. By the time I had accepted myself, it was almost too late (I had become a commuter student by then and it was difficult to make time for people outside of class). Basically, I could have had a college girl experience, but instead I had the repressor experience.

Meeting friends would have allowed me to start dating, it would have allowed me to have fun memories where my friends and I would have gone to weird places at weird times. I could have found fun people to live with in the other years, but instead I moved back home and commuted because I had nobody to be roommates with (at least commuting saved a bunch of money). I never in my four years went to the school's annual engineering days celebration. It sounds like a really fun weekend, where you and your friends can go to a music performance, march downtown, and build a boat that will ideally survive a journey down the river. If I had accepted myself, I could have met people to go with. But I was too nervous and ashamed to have gone by myself.

I regret the memories I didn't make

I had a great opportunity to be myself, but I didn't take it because I was ashamed and worried about how other people would see me. When I express this thought to somebody like my mom, she just tells me that I did what I was meant to: get a degree. And yes, I agree with her. Getting the degree was the whole point of going in the first place. It just hurts knowing that I could have also made memories as well. If you are reading this before you go to college, just remember to be yourself. You will end up regretting it otherwise.

Sorry for dooming so much, I guess I should take a moment to look at the brightside of things. I am still relatively young (22 at the time of writing this) and I am starting my career in two weeks. I can still have fun experiences in my 20's. I have a boyfriend currently. And I have made a few friends online. I can learn from my regrets and have a better future! :D

Well, I guess it's time for bed, I have to wake up early for graduation tomorrow morning. I can't believe is finally here after four years!

Goodnight girlies! =^_^=

<3 Ashley